Imperfect Harmony

No way! No freakin' way! No freakin' WAY! Goddess, why me? It's always me! I just went out into the forest to hunt a deer, and after that of course I heard the evening search horn and off ran the dogs. Well, they used to be dogs, but regarding how twisted our "government" is, they can no longer be called dogs: they're beasts; they're creatures from Hell; Lucifer's himself – Cerberus is a pussycat compared! I saw one from afar once: scarred for life, I had nightmares – and still do. Being one the few that has seen one and lived, I can remember it like it wasn't five years ago.

I'm a little ten year old getting food in my favourite hunting spot of the woods, of course, as the sole provider of my family. Then the horn. I freeze, silent as the dead. Splish, gurgle. A babbling brook. Ears showing me the suitable direction, I find it. Submerged in the water with just my nose above the surface, I wait. Luckily, I'm down-wind. Hoping against hope, I try to slow my frantic breathing, a fatally obvious beacon, but my frenzied heart causes ripples in the eddying mirror surrounding my feverish body, which is frustratingly becoming more tranquil as time passes and the wind slows down and drops in speed along with the descent of the sun. Still my hammering chest, for you will be the death of me.

Déjà vu; it was happening all over again. I tried to keep my knees from buckling, as that would be drowning for certain, but no, the flashbacks were too strong and the convulsions began to rack my body. Before I knew it, my breath was escaping in big heaving gasps. Desperately trying to regain composure, my consciousness yearned to break away from me, a slippery fish. As the edges of my vision began to furl inwards only to leave the most familiar yet most dreaded of emptiness, I saw a pale thin lifeline.

In what I thought were my dying moments, I recalled a poem my Ma used to sing for me.

Pale thin butterfly, why do you stare

While I look on, trapped in my chair?

For you know I'd prefer to sweep and soar

But something keeps me rooted, deep in my core.

Pale thin butterfly, why'd you flit closer still

Then waltz away again at the change of your will?

You know I strive to reach you, you know I try – I do!

But there's something there between us, between me and you.

Awaking violently to something cold, wet and slimy on my face then a punching on my chest followed by a scraping of something more painful, sharp and unwanted than bile up my throat, I burst fully awake with a fit of coughing. Hunched over trying to force the air which I'd lost some time ago back into my lungs, I finally noticed a presence nearby. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I glanced up. 16, no, 15. Dead straight, but now dirty with something like mould blond hair hung atop a thin, oh so thin frame like a mop head and handle. She was the most beautiful thing I'd seen since Ma had died. Marring the beauty was a ridged purple scar stretching from left temple, just missing the eye, clipping the perfectly shaped nose and finishing just past the corner of her ever downturned albeit rose lips on her almost colourless cheeks. Bright blue eyes flecked with yellow stared. Muddy browns stared back. Kind of. My face became hotter as her face became even more hostile with what looked like disgust. She flounced away and I followed.

Just as I was about to touch her, she stopped and turned and I crashed into her. Her frail body collapsed underneath me like a pack of cards. I braced my arms on either side of her to keep from crushing her: one next to her face and the other in the hollow of her armpit under her arm, which was like the other: splayed out, unresisting, complacent. Mere inches from my face she finally said "Are you coming with me? Or you gonna stay here 'nd rot?" For the first time I looked around and noticed we were in a dank, dark, damp box of a room. There was no obvious door.

"Where are we?" I asked, slightly embarrassed that I hadn't noticed where we were before. How could I have not noticed? However, look what was here with me.

"Wiv the enemy." She replied, "Ord'narily, we woulda been separa'ed inta diff'rent cells, but I clung to ya cryin' 'nd screamin' 'bout how I coon't believe ya was dead, and them thinkin' they was bein' cruel, chucked me in 'ere wiv ya." Not a flicker. Not a hint of anything changed on her face.

"Err... thank you." I said awkwardly. Taking advantage of my awkwardness, quick as a striking snake she rolled through and took with her one of my arms which she somehow twisted onto my back, the likes of which she was already sitting astride. My other hand slid out from under me and my nose crunched into the hard, unyielding floor. Lovingly, but not quite, she pushed her fingers up my neck and into my hair. Quashing that idea immediately, my head was yanked off the floor as I winced painfully. Almost not seeming to realise that she'd almost given me whiplash and may have broken my nose which was throbbing like crazy as annoyingly slowly clotting rivers of blood streamed from it, she leaned down real close and whispered in my ear "So, you wanna come with?"